Turning a New Page was conceived over a period of four years. The project started at the Literacy 2000 Towards Reintegration Conference held in Ottawa, Canada where Rick McAtee was invited to speak. He discussed the relationship between self-esteem, behavior, and lack of literacy skills. Asked to prove this connection, he was challenged to use a Federal Institution where students were reading far below grade level. The project, called Turning a New Page, spanned the next three years and focused on 1) motivating and empowering the resistant reader, 2) creating a positive attitude, 3) explicit instruction, and 4) fluency. In 2002, the project was featured on an ABC special broadcast, "Reading: Your ABC's to Success." In 2003, the success of the project was documented in the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, "Life and Literacy: Struggling Readers in Prison." In 2004, Turning a New Page (now a company) used the information and data obtained from the older resistant readers to create materials intended for use by instructors everywhere. Today, Turning a New Page continues to create and sell materials to help struggling learners.